Early Jugoslav Literature (1000-1800)

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SLAVONIC STUDIES Vol. I EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS NEW YORK LEMCKE & BUECHNER 30-32 East 20th Street LONDON HUMPHREY MILFORD Amen Corner, E.C. shanghai EDWARD EVANS & SONS, Ltd. 30 North Szechuen Road EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE ( 1 000-1800) BY MILIVOY S. STANOYEVICH, Ph.D. PRESS 1893 ; m i Jleto gork COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1922 All rights reserved Copyright, 1922 By Columbia University Press Printed from type. Published January. 1922 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface vii-viii Introduction 1-5 FIRST PERIOD THE ORIGINS I. Old Slavonic Language 7-14 II. Old Slavonic Literature 15-28 SECOND PERIOD THE AGE OF RENAISSANCE III. Republic of Dubrovnik and the Renaissance . 29-37 IV. The Poets of the 15th Century 38-42 V. Lyrics and Drama of the 1 6th Century .... 43-49 VI. Gundulic and his Times (17th Century) .... 50-56 THIRD PERIOD THE AGE OF DECLINE _ VII. The Academies and Societies 57 6o VIII. The Moralists and Minor Authors 61-69 IX. Epilogue 70-71 Bibliography 73~75 - Index 77 9i PREFACE The object of the present treatise, as indicated by the title given to it, may seem sufficiently comprehensive. In the small space allotted to me it has only been possible to cover the main facts of the subject without professing to be ex- haustive. But I trust that even these outlines, scanty as they are, will be of use as giving some idea of the historical course of literary evolution, and I hope that at some future time they may be more adequately filled out. The actual facts presented here have been chiefly drawn from the original sources. The old MSS. and published works of individual authors, in the larger European and American libraries, form the basis upon which I have relied in preparing this study. However, I have also made use of much of what has already been written in the monographs of many Slavonic historians and in several Jugo- slav publications indicated in the footnotes and bibliography. With respect to the orthography and transliteration of the Slavonic words, use is made here of the system adopted by the Jugoslovenska Akademija Znanosti i Umetnosti (The Jugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts), namely: C-c for English ti or ch in tune, litera/ure C-c " 1 Vlll EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE general treatment of the subject. Without their unflagging interest and encouragement this volume would not have been written. My gratitude is also due to Dr. C. A. Manning for his special technical help, and to the librarians of Columbia, Harvard, Yale and the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library, who have enabled me, in almost all cases, to write from a first-hand acquaintance with the literature. M. S. S. New York April 9, 192 EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE INTRODUCTION The history of a language is the history of the people who speak it or have spoken it. Virtually it is the history of many tribes, different in origin, manners, and speech. When the people of another powerful race succeeded in crushing these tribes, they usually took possession of the conquered land, and allowed the others to live only on condition of being quiet and doing all the work. It is to these conquests, kept up through- out the Middle Ages, that the majority of European nations owe their geographical limits and even their present names. Their establishment has been mainly the result of greed and military power. New societies have been formed out of the wrecks of the older ones which were violently destroyed, but in the work of reconstruction they have always retained some- thing of their previous existence in their internal constitution and especially in their language. Languages, like nations, have their periods of growth, ma-, turity, and decay, but while nine-tenths of the vocabulary of a people lives in the literature and speech of the cultured classes, the remainder has a robust life in the daily usage of the sons of toil. This limited but more persistent portion of the national speech never fails to include the names of those objects which are the most familiar and the most beloved. Such are, for instance, the names of the nearest relatives, father, mother, brother, two or three of the commoner metals, tools, weapons, cereals, domestic animals; the house and the most striking features in the landscape; the mountain peaks and ranges; the valleys, lakes and rivers; the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky and the clouds. At all times and in every region of the world, these names have had the same clear and well-defined meanings; their visible forms stand as a sort of material lexi- con, explaining the more archaic forms of living languages that have ceased to be vernacular. 2 EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE Many nations have left no written records, and their history would be a blank volume, or nearly so, were it not that in the places where they have sojourned they have left traces of their migrations sufficiently clear to enable us to reconstruct the outlines of their history. The hills, the valleys, and the rivers are the only writing-tablets on which unlettered nations have been able to inscribe their annals, and these may be read in the names that still cling to the sites, and often contain the records of a class of events about which written history is for the most part silent. These connotations which originally had a descriptive import, referring mostly to the physical features of the land, have even the advantage over the common names of a nation's speech of being less subject to the process of phonetic decay. They seem to be possessed of an inherent and inde- structible vitality which makes them survive invasions and catastrophes. Wars can trample down or extirpate whatever grows upon a soil, excepting only its native plants and the names of those sites upon which man has established his domi- cile. Seldom is a people utterly exterminated, for the proud conqueror has need of some at least of the natives to till the soil anew. These enslaved outcasts, though they may hand down no memory of the splendid deeds of the nation's heroes, yet retain a most tenacious recollection of the names of the hamlets which their progenitors inhabited, and near to which their fathers were interred. Ethnographical nomenclature and national tradition are therefore an important factor in all that concerns a nation's early history, and they often furnish most effectual aid in the solution of linguistic problems. their If, then, we would trace the Slavonic languages to sources, the course to be pursued is clearly marked out. The subject, which covers a wide range of interesting studies, involves, first of all, a critical inquiry into the origin, character, and distribution of the Slavonic race—Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgars, Jugoslavs, Cechoslovaks, and Poles. At various epochs these nations have found their way into central and southeastern Europe and created there new religions, new idioms, and new oral and written literatures. From the com- plexity of the subject, it is obvious that all these details are not the fruit of any one man's learning, but the result of long INTRODUCTION 3 patient labors of many specialists in each of these branches. Availing ourselves of the latest researches of the distinguished scholars whose names we quote as our authorities, and whose acknowledged learning and accuracy need no commendation, we here present a comparative digest of their substance, so arranged as to be neither reduced to the skeleton of a mere abridgment, nor extended to the huge dimensions of a learned work. Supposing the reader to be familiar with at least the outlines of Slavonic literary history, we will not treat it in its entirety or in all the different branches. We will rather dwell on the early literature of one branch—the Southern Slavs or Jugoslavs, who are mainly composed of three peoples of the same race: Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In the course of time common interests drew these people to- gether and brought about a corresponding fusion of their idioms. The traces of their language and literature are still so clearly marked that they easily indicate the degree of power and adherence to national speech and customs which was displayed by each branch in their present unification and amalgamation. The term Jugo-Slav (South-Slav) as now used by most European peoples, has a wider signification than that which it originally bore. The Southern Slavs call themselves Jugo- sloveni, and their land Jugoslavia. This is composed of several provinces. In the beginning of the last century one of these provinces (Serbia) gave birth to a few military leaders who became formidable to the invaders of the nation's liberties, and their deeds are known in the West. The name was then extended so as to include the whole people and country which is called Jugoslavia, just as the tribe of Angles, though numer- ically inferior to the Saxons, gave their name to England and all that the term English now denotes. As the Angles, Saxons and Jutes merged in one British people, and the dialects of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex in one English tongue, so in Jugoslavia the inhabitants of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia blended in one Jugoslav people, and their kindred idioms practically in one Serbian or Croatian language, which is also, for better understanding, called in Slavonic philology Serbo-Croatian. 4 EARLY JUGOSLAV LITERATURE The Jugoslav writers of the 17th and 18th centuries: An tun Kanizlic, Emerik Pavic, Matija Rejkovic and especially IgnatDordic.Jeronim Kavanin,and Andra Kacic Miotic, very often mention the words Iliria, Ilir and Iliricki.

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